Ruben Ostlund has shared new details on his next film, The Entertainment System Is Down, which he expects will be another international co-production.
Having previously revealed that the film will be set on a long-haul flight where the digital entertainment consoles stop working, Ostlund has now said he aims to bring the story to a point where the passengers bring the plane down.
He also told Screen he expects the film to be an international co-production like Palme d’Or winner Triangle Of Sadness, and confirmed he will reunite with French producer Philippe Bober through the latter’s Coproduction Office, alongside Ostlund and Erik Hemmendorff’s Swedish outfit Plattform Produktion.
Bober has produced Ostlund’s last three features – Force Majeure, The Square and Triangle Of Sadness – and was co-producer and associate producer on the two before that, Play (2011) and Involuntary (2008).
With the script at an early stage, production dates have not yet been floated. It is anticipated, although not yet confirmed, that Coproduction Office will handle sales on the film, as it has done on Ostlund’s last five features.
Ostlund told Screen he has “started to collect ideas” for the story, which he will write himself, but with input from other collaborators – including his wife Sina Gortz, who Ostlund said “put in 10,000 hours” of work on Triangle Of Sadness.
For cast, Ostlund will pursue his regular practice of working with a new group of actors, aside from Triangle star Woody Harrelson, who revealed his participation in the new film in Cannes. “It has been hard for me to reuse actors; you want to create a completely new universe every time,” the director said.
Regarding the plot, Ostlund described the film as a “disaster movie”.
“Quite soon after take-off, the crew has the horrible announcement to the passengers – unfortunately the entertainment system is down,” he said. “So the passengers are doomed to 15 hours of non-digital distraction in their life.
“It’s going to be very interesting to investigate how we get to the chaos on that flight,” he continued. “I think it’s 100% possible, in a believable way, to create such a chaos on the flight that it crashes.”
Unlike many filmmakers who prefer to keep a project under wraps until it is in production, Ostlund is keen to discuss The Entertainment System Is Down, as a means of sourcing ideas.
One such story that may end up in the film was about “someone who was on a flight from Europe to the US, and they were flying over Greenland, and all of a sudden it became very heavy turbulence.
“Twenty percent of the oxygen masks fell down; but only 20%. So it became a fight to get an oxygen mask. Half-a-minute later the crew came out and said, ‘Sorry, nothing happened, it was a false alarm’ – a bit like a mass Force Majeure situation [when an avalanche causes panic amongst a group of skiers]. Because then you’re going to spend another four or five hours together with the person you’ve wrestled with.”
Revolution chances
Ostlund’s 2022 Palme d’Or winner played well to the local Sarajevo audience when opening the festival on Friday. The film depicts passengers and crew of distinct social standing, on a luxury yacht; when the yacht crashes during a storm, social norms are thrown into disarray.
With rising energy prices fomenting social unrest across much of Europe, Ostlund says revolutions often require a trigger. He cited a 1783 volcanic eruption in Iceland that was a catalyst for the French revolution due to its effect on crop yields; and a photo of Ethiopia’s emperor Haile Selassie feeding his dogs extravagant portions of meat, which caused mass outrage amongst a starving population.
“When that image was published and spread out, people had enough,” he said. “It can be different in different times. It’s going to be interesting to see if [social unrest] will happen or not.”
He also critiqued European societies for being too “individualistic”, restricting collective progress.
“We’ve lost our trust in the state,” said Ostlund. “In 1967, Sweden changed from left-hand traffic to right-hand traffic. Isn’t it amazing that eight million people from one day to another can adapt to this? And there were actually fewer car accidents in the following years than there had been in the history of traffic.
“It says something about how we can organise people in a society, and create a new social contract. When it comes to the bigger problems we’re dealing with today, we’re not going to be able to deal with them if we have this individualistic society where it’s only about how I position myself, and what I like.”
Speaking to Screen soon after British-Indian author Salman Rushdie was stabbed on stage in New York, Ostlund described the incident as “a little scary”, and said a media focus on conflicts is in turn engendering more violence.
“It’s almost like [select media outlets] forget that culture is actually creating behaviour,” he said. “Another young man that is excluded might want to get that position by creating a terror attack.
“The media is going to go first and say that the world is very dangerous, very violent etc. Then the world will follow.”
As for a potential awards campaign for Triangle Of Sadness, Ostlund said “it would be fantastic to have an Oscar”, but wryly described the Palme d’Or – of which he has two – as “the nicest prize”.
He added that it’s hard travelling to events without his wife and 11-month-old son; but that they’re going to come with him “quite a lot” in promoting and celebrating the film.
Having received the honorary Heart of Sarajevo on Friday, Ostlund subsequently participated in a ‘Coffee with…’ session and a Masterclass about his career to date. Neon is releasing Triangle Of Sadness in the US on October 7 with Curzon following in the UK and Ireland from October 28.
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